Best of the GURPS Forums: Collaborative Party Creation

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While searching the SJGames forums for something else, I stumbled across an interesting post by Kromm about party creation:

Many groups (okay . . . most of mine as a GM and several I've been in as a player) do something like this:

    1. Discuss general goals: "We need a healer," "More ranged weapons this time! We always get hosed by flying things," "No barehanded martial artists, ok? Tired of paying for replacement fists," "Don't forget to have two heavy fighters this time . . . I still remember when Sam the Ogre got mind controlled," and so on.
    2. Choose specific roles: "I'll take the cleric," "I'll play a scout," "Put me down for a barbarian," "I like knights," etc.
    3. Create characters (or dig up previously created ones) – and yes, however many the player likes. Sometimes done collaboratively.
    4. Select characters from among that stable. Sometimes done collaboratively.
    5. Tweak characters in collaboration with the others in the group to maximize ability coverage and minimize undesired overlap; e.g., "Oh, you have those spells, too? No problem, I'll take this other set."
    6. Establish the final, tweaked characters as a team and come up with a team origin story. In effect, the team is a "character" created by everybody.
    7. Tweak team logistics collaboratively to maximize effectiveness. The characters are finalized at this stage, but we could imagine them saying things like: "You're short on cash? I can loan you $900 for a greatsword," "I'll carry your healer's kit so you'll stay at Light encumbrance," "Let's pool all our leftover money in a fund for group basics, tents, and such."

I think those last three steps, especially step 7, might explain the missing link in the conversation about wealth.

Actual play starts after step 7. Steps 6-7 for a party amount to establishing a rationale for working together – a good thing, in general. In effect, the GM lets the players do a little pre-adventure discussion and trading as a reward for not being a rabble with no motivation.

Now, I've met players who are very insistent on building their own own character their way who might be hard to sell on the "you can submit as many characters to the stable as you want and then we pick from the stable" idea, but it is interesting, and even if you don't go that far I think steps #1-2 and #4-7 are a solid approach for any group.

(If you haven't read one of my "Best of the GURPS Forums" posts before, I say a bit about my reason for wanting to do them here.)

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